Plunging through stages of grief through the GRE

Congratulations, you’ve decided to pursue a post-graduate education. Actually, you probably didn’t decide to go to grad school—seeing as “the bachelor’s is the new high school diploma,” you were most likely forced into academia if you wanted to live above the poverty line. Wouldn’t it have been great to be born in your grandparents’ generation where all you needed was a high school diploma and some ambition to bop-bop-bop bop to the top like Sharpay from High School Musical?

But no, you’re a Millennial. Born in the ‘90s, right in time to witness the popularization of Pokémon in the US and Beyoncé breaking off from Destiny’s Child—you even lived through the 2007 Britney Spears meltdown and the Kim Kardashian sex tape. You don’t take handouts—you work hard. Therefore, you’re getting your Master’s or Doctorate’s—but before you do that, chances are you have to take the Graduate Record Examination, or the GRE. Studying for the GRE is a daunting process, and odds are, if you’re studying for it right now, you’re going through the cycle of grief.

Denial

As the time to take the GRE approaches, you think to yourself “I don’t have to study!” And why should you? You grew up in Florida. You live on standardized testing. You suffered through years of the FCAT at the hands of Jeb Bush, you took the NORM, the EOC, and the PERT. You took more acronymed standardized tests than there were government organizations during the post-depression FDR administration. Even more proof that you don’t need to study for the GRE is that you took the SAT and the ACT. Not only that, but you aced them. You’re a child prodigy—you got a 600 on your math SAT and even finished your essays within the allotted time for the ACT. You have Bright Futures. The GRE doesn’t scare you.

Anger

So you buy your GRE prep book anyway. Thinking, “Yeah, I’m such a genius now, imagine the super genius I’d be if I actually applied myself.” So you take a practice exam. You score in the 30th percentile for both Quantitative and Verbal reasoning. You’re instantly furious—you’ve never been this angry at a book since Jacob falls in love with Bella’s baby in Breaking Dawn. You’ve read a book before, so why don’t you know what obfuscate means? You’ve never gotten below a C on a paper, so how dare this book tell you that on section two question fifteen you used “loquacious” wrong? No, this book is trash, how dare it tell you that on question three Quantity A is not bigger than Quantity B? You did the math in your head, and this book has the audacity to tell you that you’re wrong?

Bargaining

Maybe slamming your prep book against the wall was a bit of an overreaction. You should be nicer to your book. Maybe if you treat it nicely, you’ll get a good score on your essay. Maybe if you pray to Kaplan and Princeton every night, you’ll get into grad school. Maybe if you rack up that good karma, you won’t fail the GRE and bring dishonor on your family. Maybe if you put deodorant on each pit in the right way, maybe if you wake up at 6 AM every morning and drink detox tea and eat raw kale, maybe if you call your grandma more often just to see how she’s doing, the College Board will see that you’re trying, that you’re a good person—maybe they’ll take your winning personality into account when they add up your score.

Depression

You’re listless. You haven’t showered in days and have gone through your fifth pint of Ben & Jerry’s that day. You keep watching that episode of Full House where DJ is taking the SAT and she doesn’t even spell her name right and think “how did they predict my future so well?” You’ve seen this episode forty times and know it word for word. It never once crosses your mind that maybe if you studied for the GRE as much as you study goofy ‘90s family sitcoms, you might have a chance of passing. You write emo poetry and listen to Pierce the Veil—you knew your emo phase wasn’t for naught and that it would come in handy someday.

A haiku about the GRE:

I am going to fail

I won’t make it to grad school

Life is bleak, I’m dumb

You look at your work. No wonder you keep scoring a 130 on the Verbal Reasoning portion.

Acceptance

Okay, so what? The GRE is hard. You also only took one practice test before deciding that it was too hard and you were never going to grad school. It’s just a test, and you’ve made it through worse. Chances are, if you’re studying for the GRE now, you’ve already made it through three years of college. Come on, you’ve made it through orgo one and two, you survived managerial accounting, calc 3 with analytical trigonometry, and thrived in your internship in this weird scenario where you’re a triple major in chemistry, hospitality, and mechanical engineering. It’s just a test. You pick up your discarded GRE book and open it once more as you remember that if Pitbull can get his PhD, so can you.